We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir membership improves...

The opportunities and constraints facing Ethiopian agriculture are strongly influenced by conditions which vary across geographical space. These conditions include basic agricultural production potentials, access to input and output markets, and local population densities which represent both...

""Smallholders in Ghana, as elsewhere, are widely considered to be the largest as well as the most vulnerable component of the rural sector. Ghana professes national development objectives of reducing rural poverty through the increased productivity and commercialization of smallholder...

Rural non-farm development plays a key role in generating employment in many developing countries. Clustering is an important industrial organization in the rural non-farm sector. Based on primary surveys of both urban and rural handloom weaver clusters in Ethiopia which took place in May/June...

"The choices that smallholder farmers are able to make are strongly conditioned by the geographic conditions in which they live. The importance of this fact for rural development strategy is not lost on policy makers. For example, the government of Ethiopia frequently frames policy discussions...

"Because the conditions for agricultural development vary considerably across space, we need to develop methods that allow us to take such variability into account when evaluating development strategies for particular crops or farming systems. This paper addresses spatially varying...

"We examine the spatial determinants of the prevalence of poverty for small spatially defined populations in rural Malawi. Poverty prevalence was estimated using a small-area poverty estimation technique. A theoretical approach based on the risk chain conceptualization of household economic...

"Agricultural development strategies delineate priorities for actions to enhance agricultural and overall development. They are usually put forward by individual countries based on assessments of national needs. Seldom are attempts made to identify strategic priorities for agricultural...